Defiant in the face of wholesale criticism, Hamish McLennan, the Chairman of Rugby Australia, refuses to step down despite being held accountable for the ‘Eddie Jones debacle’. Turning a blind eye to the uproar, McLennan asserts his determination to mend what he describes as the ‘broken’ condition of the sport. He emphatically rebuffs the call for eviction, borne out of what some describe as the worst phase of Australian rugby, catalysed by Eddie Jones’ unexpected decision to abdicate his position as coach after just a year into his five-year tenure.
McLennan’s journey back home from the World Cup held in France was far from triumphant, with the pressing concern of finding a new coach for the Wallabies – a position suddenly left vacant by Jones after the darkest campaign in the history of Australian rugby.
Dogged determination fills McLennan’s resolve to extinguish the inferno he blames on the mismanagement of the previous administration, ever since his appointment in 2020. “I love the sport and I’m not a quitter,” he confided in one of his conversations with Nine newspapers.
Beyond nurturing his love for the game, McLennan wishes to teach his kids the value of perseverance. In his words, “I think we’re better than we were three years ago.” Despite the unsatisfactory showing at the World Cup, he believes the powerful tug of interest in rugby will sail the sport through these troubled waters. Skeptics have declared the code of the game dead, but he’d beg to differ. “We’ve got a World Cup coming up in 2027. Now we’ve got the (British and Irish) Lions in 2025, so we’ll bat on and we’ll solve it.”
On reflection, he dismisses the question of whether appointing Jones was the right decision as ‘almost irrelevant’. He believes that the system, as it currently stands, is defective and warrants an overhaul. He accepted Jones’ resignation on Tuesday, marking a sour end to the World Cup journey in France.
Looking towards the future, he says his gaze is set on an Australian coach, emphasizing “no shortage” of potential candidates. “I think Australian coaches tend to have a more intimate knowledge of grassroots (rugby),” he elucidated.
Speculations are swirling that Eddie Jones may have resigned to take up a coaching job in Japan. On this point, McLennan insists that he had no conversations with his Japanese counterparts, lending credence to Jones’s statement that he was left without a job. In time, McLennan professes, the real story behind Jones’s resignation will unravel.
